How do we design the future? Fiction has long played a key role in the creation and envisaging of better (and worse) worlds in design. Today, this socially-driven impulse to shape a better tomorrow through design narratives is only growing amidst pressing concerns over what the future holds.

In this symposium we will bring together designers, critics, academics and other voices to explore how designers have created narratives of futures, be they intended or impossible, desirable or not. Whether through the creation of imagined spaces, subjects or temporalities, creating tomorrow today raises questions about design, fiction and social responsibility.

This half-day symposium is organised by Cat Rossi, Senior Lecturer in Design History and Portia Ungley, Lecturer in Visual Culture at Kingston University, London.